The House of Sleep

by Jonathan Coe

  He had completed most of this work by the time Ruby returned with her trawl of shells; at which point they took a collective decision to abandon architectural logic and continue by piling tower upon tower, so that the castle began to rise impudently up towards the sky like some impossible neo-Gothic wedding cake. Robert stood with one foot in the moat, one on the castle walls, and busied himself with the upper storeys while Ruby began to stud the lower walls with a profligate coating of limpets and topshells, acteons and periwinkles.

  ‘What happened there?’ she asked, stopping for a moment, her attention caught by the sight of Robert’s bare foot lodged precariously above the postern door. She touched the foot lightly, tracing the still livid double scar – like French quotation marks – where he had months ago nicked the ankle with his razor.

  ‘Oh, that,’ he said, looking down. ‘That’s nothing. I cut myself shaving, that’s all.’

  ‘I thought men only shaved their faces,’ said Ruby.

  ‘That’s true,’ he said, ‘mostly. But I was actually shaving my legs at the time.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know, really. It was an experiment.’

  Ruby was very accepting about all of this. She looked briefly up at Robert with wide, serious eyes, and then returned to her handiwork.

  Among her more exciting discoveries was a trio of blue-rayed limpets, a pair of saddle oysters and a magnificent Pelican’s Foot. She had handfuls of tellin shells, their elastic ligaments still intact so that the paired valves could be opened out to resemble butterfly wings. Colour was provided by the quahog, of which she had found ten or twelve: she cracked them open and positioned them with their colourful interiors facing outwards, adding a touch of royal purple. More subtly, she arranged row upon row of cowries, offsetting their pasta-shell-like plainness with the occasional well-placed ormer, whose tinted iridescent lining would catch the rays of the sun and reflect them back, making the whole edifice twinkle and shimmer in the sunlight like a fantastic mirage. She reserved her augers and screw-shells for the castle towers, where they served as delicate flagpoles, twirling and spiralling up towards the heavens in festive brilliance, making Ruby think irresistibly of fun-fairs, helter-skelters and ice-cream cornets.

  The castle was, they both agreed, a masterpiece.

  ‘It’ll still be here tomorrow, won’t it?’ Ruby said. ‘As long as it doesn’t rain. Then I can bring my friends to come and see it. Susie Briggs and Jill Drew and David.’

  ‘I don’t think it will,’ said Robert. He straightened one of the razor-shells they had used as a drawbridge, and stirred up the clear salt water in the moat, setting it into rippling motion. ‘You see, the tide’s going to come all the way in soon, and when that happens, it’ll be washed away. Most of it, anyway.’

  ‘Oh.’ Ruby was very disheartened. ‘Well, why didn’t you think of that before?’

  ‘I did. Only we had to build it here, because the sand’s nice and damp.’ He picked up the bucket and spade and held out his other hand for her to grasp. ‘Come on. Let’s go and tell Sarah about it.’

  Ruby continued to make disgruntled remarks about his choice of location as they passed over a barrier of crisp seaweed and began to trudge their way back across dry sand. But in Robert’s ears her voice faded to nothingness, became one with the windless silence of the beach, the deadly stillness of the late afternoon air, as he approached Sarah and dared a smile at her when she raised her eyes from her book. She had draped a cardigan over her shoulders and buried her feet in the sand, and as he looked at her this time he knew, he knew with an absolute and thrilling certainty, that a terrible change had taken place in his life; that it had happened months ago, in his room, the day she had come in with her hair still wet, intending to comfort him; but only today had its true meaning and extent become clear as he realized in this one stretched instant that there was nothing in the world he would not do for this woman; no quest he would not undertake, no sacrifice he would not willingly perform…

  Your gravity, your grace have turned a tide in me…

  ‘That took a long time.’

  The words vanished from his mind as quickly and as inexplicably as they had formed. He assumed a tone of flippant outrage.

  ‘What are you talking about? Have you seen the size of that sandcastle? That’s a work of art, that is.’

  ‘It looks very impressive. What do you think, Ruby? Do you like it?’

  Ruby nodded and nestled up beside her, insisting: ‘I did the shells.’

  ‘I didn’t know either of you had such a creative bent.’

  ‘Neither did I,’ said Robert. ‘I think sand must be my natural medium.’

  ‘Are you the Sandman, then?’ Ruby asked.

  ‘Perhaps I am. Perhaps I’ll be coming to visit you tonight when you’re asleep.’

  Sarah looked down fondly at Ruby’s tired face and drooping eyelids. ‘I don’t think you’ll have to wait until tonight, somehow.’

  ‘I must have worn her out,’ said Robert.

  It took Ruby very little time to fall fast asleep, and during her sweet, easy descent into unconsciousness, a silence established itself between Sarah and Robert, warm and companionable. Sitting beside her on that empty beach, not so much separated as conjoined by the body of the sleeping child, he felt that he had never been so intimate with her. Beneath the heat of the sun his thoughts blurred, pleasantly, into a thick haze, and he had no desire to read: he was happy just to sit there, savouring this moment of closeness, staring at the ocean until his retina ached with the brightness thrown off by the sparkling water. After a while he became aware that Sarah had laid down her novel and that she, too, was looking seawards, her blue-grey eyes filmy with contentment; sun-drunk.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked.

  Sarah paused, drew in her breath. ‘You know, I hate it when Ronnie asks me that.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Robert. ‘I didn’t mean to be intrusive.’

  ‘No: I said I hate it when Ronnie asks me that.’

  Something inside Robert rejoiced to hear these words. He was immediately hungry for more. ‘But not when I do?’

  ‘When I’m alone with her,’ said Sarah, slowly, ‘I feel she’s constantly trying to… read me. Whereas you give me – I don’t know – space, somehow. Room to breathe.’

  Conscious of his own daring, Robert told her: ‘That’s the infallible sign of true affection. According to your book.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘“No opposition between interior solitude and friendship.”’ He had ventured this far, and now, tremblingly, took one step further. ‘But you’d still rather be with her than with me?’

  Sarah held his gaze for a second or two, then smiled, and turned back towards the water. ‘Since you ask, I was thinking about Cleo.’

  ‘Cleo?’

  ‘Specifically, I was thinking… I was thinking that if I’d had a twin sister, and she’d disappeared when I was very small, before I’d had the chance to know her, then there would hardly be a day, hardly a moment, when I didn’t think about her. Wonder where she was. What she was doing. Is that what it’s like?’

  Robert couldn’t answer. This time, the words refused to come. ‘I suppose so,’ he forced himself to say, eventually.

  ‘Do you ever mention her at home? Talk about her with your parents?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, never.’ He seemed uneasy with the subject, and picked up the copy of Gravity and Grace again, adding: ‘It says something else in here…’ He thumbed through the book, but failed to find the relevant page. ‘Something about loss: that when you lose somebody, when you miss them, you suffer because the departed person has become something imaginary; something unreal. But your desire for them isn’t imaginary. So that’s what you have to fasten on: the desire. Because it’s real.’

  Sarah frowned. ‘Perhaps you’ll meet her one day, though. She’ll seek you out; or you’ll start looking for her.’

  ‘I might.’ He blew a few
grains of sand away from the pages of the book, and closed it. ‘It would be a bit silly, wouldn’t it, to go through your whole life desiring something, and not doing anything about it?’

  ‘I’m sure it happens.’

  ‘Yes. I’m sure it does.’

  The shadow cast by the cliff lengthened, stealing over them. It was getting cooler, and Sarah’s arms were covered with goosebumps. Ruby, lying curled against her thighs, stirred for a moment: shifted and kicked against Sarah’s legs in ineffectual spasms. A few words gurgled, brokenly, from her mouth. It sounded like ‘biscuits’ or ‘quickly’ or ‘Timothy’.

  ‘Do you think she’s all right?’ said Robert.

  The words swelled into a quiet, uneven, murmurous stream. Sentences formed and dissolved; strange polysyllables and indecipherable neologisms ebbed and flowed from Ruby’s barely parted lips. Her body was at rest and her eyelids were closed, but for a few minutes she continued to talk hummingly in her sleep. Together, Sarah and Robert listened to her somniloquy, anxious but oddly enthralled, until she fell silent.

  ‘Do you think we should wake her?’ said Robert, then. ‘You don’t think she’s having a seizure or anything?’

  ‘She’s fine.’ Sarah felt Ruby’s cheek and forehead. Her breathing was slow and regular. ‘It might be a mistake to wake her. We’d better be going back soon, anyway. We’ll wake her then.’ Gently, carefully, she eased away from Ruby’s sleeping body and rose to her feet. ‘I suppose I’d better go and look at this creation of yours. Before the water gets to it.’

  ‘I wanted to give you a guided tour –’

  ‘No. You stay here, and look after her.’

  Robert watched her walking down towards the sandcastle, the pastel colours of her skirt and cardigan washed greyer and bluer by the encroaching shadows; he watched her walking around the castle, inspecting it from different angles, her arms folded; watched her squat beside it, examining the craftsmanship even more closely, the decorative arrangement of shells and the fine, chiselled detail on the battlements. And as he watched her, his hand reached out to touch Ruby’s lobster-red hair while she slept, and he began to speak. Aching to tell somebody, at last, of his feelings for Sarah, aching to unburden himself of an emotional weight which he could now barely support, he settled upon this small, sleeping child as the best available recipient of his confidences.

  And he said: ‘I can’t see… How this will ever…’

  ∗

  Ruby had cried, briefly, upon seeing the sandcastle half-washed away, its turrets and gateway reduced to a shapeless mass by the hissing, invading water; but she had been very brave about it, on the whole, and found other things to think and talk about as Robert and Sarah escorted her back up the cliff path. She was very tired, by now, and Robert carried her up the final stretch, where the path was broad and even enough to allow it. After that, the party split up. Robert went back to Ashdown, where he was meant to be meeting Terry, and Sarah walked with Ruby down the single-track lane to her parents’ house. Dusk was falling, and the child held on to her hand tightly.

  ‘I hope your mother won’t be worried,’ Sarah said. ‘We’re going to be a bit late getting home.’

  ‘She won’t be,’ Ruby breezed.

  ‘And have you enjoyed yourself today?’

  ‘Yes. It’s been the best day ever.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad. Only perhaps we shouldn’t have stayed so long.’

  ‘I don’t think we stayed long enough,’ said Ruby. ‘I think we should have stayed there all night.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. You’re much too tired.’

  ‘I’m not tired at all.’

  ‘So that’s why you went to sleep on the beach, is it?’

  Ruby was momentarily chastened; then said, in a tone of mild curiosity: ‘I didn’t know I’d been asleep.’

  ‘Well you were,’ said Sarah. ‘And you were making noises, too.’

  ‘Making noises? You mean I was talking?’

  ‘I suppose you could call it talking.’ She was surprised that Ruby seemed to be taking this in her stride. ‘Why, have you done it before?’

  ‘I do it all the time, Mummy says. She was worried about it, and she took me to see the doctor, but he said she needn’t be.’

  ‘And what do you talk about, in your sleep?’

  ‘Mummy says it’s just nonsense.’

  They turned a corner, and the cottages were visible now, only a few hundred yards away.

  ‘If I had a bicycle,’ said Ruby, turning and looking back towards Ashdown, a bold silhouette on the horizon, ‘I could come and see you all the time, couldn’t I?’

  ‘But you don’t have a bicycle,’ Sarah pointed out.

  ‘I’ve asked for one. It’s my birthday soon.’

  ‘And what did your parents say?’

  ‘They said it was a lot of money.’

  ‘Well, it probably is.’

  ‘Yes, but I really, really want one. Not just a bit. If I had a bicycle,’ she said, ‘I could come up to your house, and you and Robert could take me to the beach every day. Except when I was at school.’

  ‘You’d soon get bored if we went there every day,’ said Sarah. ‘But we will go again. Next time we might go with Veronica.’

  ‘Can she make sandcastles?’ Ruby asked.

  ‘I’m sure she can.’

  ‘As good as Robert’s?’

  ‘Bigger and better, probably.’

  Ruby clearly found this hard to believe. In any case, she would not be deflected so easily from her theme. ‘Well, I still want a bicycle,’ she said. ‘I’m going to ask them again tonight.’

  Sarah had an idea: a rather mischievous idea. It came to her quite suddenly, and then she toyed with it, turning it over flirtatiously in her mind – slightly shocked at herself – until they reached the gate at the bottom of the Sharps’ garden. Ruby swung the gate open and was about to run up to the front door when Sarah stopped her, tapping her shoulder. ‘Listen,’ she said, and sat down on one of the low walls which ran on either side of the garden path, so that she and Ruby found themselves face to face, in conspiratorial closeness.

  ‘What?’ said Ruby.

  ‘Here’s what you should do,’ Sarah whispered, ‘if you want that bicycle.’

  Ruby waited breathlessly.

  ‘You should ask for it in your sleep.’

  A baffled pause. ‘In my sleep?’

  ‘Yes. Your mother’s heard you talking in your sleep, hasn’t she?’

  ‘Mmm…’

  ‘So the next time she comes to your bedroom at night, you pretend to be talking in your sleep – yes? – and you say lots of stuff about how much you want this bicycle.’

  Ruby met her gaze evenly. ‘But why can’t I ask for it when I’m awake?’

  ‘Because if you talk about it in your sleep, then your mother will know that you mean it. She’ll know how important it is to you. So she’ll have to get it.’

  Comprehension was beginning to dawn, making slow progress across Ruby’s freckled face: so Sarah pressed the point home.

  ‘She’ll have to believe you. She’ll know it’s the truth. Because nobody–’ (and of all the many strange things Ruby had heard that day, this was the second that she would never forget) ‘– nobody would ever tell a lie in their sleep. Would they?’

  ∗

  The other thing Ruby would never forget was the sound of Robert’s voice as he talked to her, late that afternoon, believing her to be asleep when in fact she had just been woken up by the careful movement of Sarah rising to her feet. The sound of his voice as he spoke to her, softly, almost inaudibly, of something which she didn’t understand. The sound of his voice as he said:

  ‘I can’t see… How this will ever…’

  And then: ‘I have never wanted anything…’

  And then, after a deeper and longer breath: ‘I have never wanted anything so badly, Ruby… You don’t mind if I tell you this, do you?… I may as well tell you… While you’re asleep, because then… M
y secret will be safe… Though I wonder if it is a secret, from her… Or anybody… Not that anybody else matters… What they think…

  ‘Ruby…

  ‘I’m only young… Though to you I must seem old, quite old… But I feel young… Or did, until… Recently… But even so… Even so, I know… Or at least imagine…

  ‘I can’t imagine… Ever… Not wanting her…

  ‘Ever…

  ‘Though perhaps… In the fullness of time, at the end of the day…

  ‘But then this is the end of the day…

  ‘The point is…

  ‘You’re right, of course… I am young, there may be others… But personally… I can’t see it… And in any case… That’s not what I want… I want… I have to win… To earn her, somehow… And if…

  ‘You see… If she doesn’t love me, now… If she can’t love me, as I am… That’s all right… Because neither can I… If she can’t love me… Then I can’t love myself…

  ‘And there are no limits… None at all, Ruby… There is nothing I wouldn’t do… To make her want…

  ‘Do you understand? Do you believe that? Do you know what I –?’

  And then Robert fell silent, having looked down, and having seen that Ruby, whom he had imagined to be asleep, was not asleep at all. She was lying quite still, but her limbs were stiff and tightened, and her eyes were open, as wide open

  Stage Three

  10

  open and ushered Terry into a darkened room in which two sounds competed for precedence: a low hum, as from some unidentified electrical device, and a sort of quiet scuttling, the continuous patter of small frantic footsteps which seemed to be coming from every direction. Then Dr Dudden switched on the overhead lighting, and the following scene presented itself.

  The room was not extensive – it was about the size of Terry’s room overlooking the ocean – and it contained twelve small tables, arranged in three rows of four. On each of these tables stood a large glass tank. Terry looked closer at the first of these. Its floor consisted of a shallow basin of water, and just an inch above this was something resembling a turntable, about one foot in diameter. The tank was divided in half by a glass partition, and in each half there was a white rat, its head wired up to electrodes which in turn were connected to a single master computer standing in the centre of the room. The turntable was revolving slowly, so that the rats had to keep in constant motion: otherwise they would have been swept into the water when they came into contact with the glass partition. The two rats appeared to be in radically different states of health: one was clean, sleek and bright-eyed, the other had ragged and thinning fur, and its eyes were haunted and bloodshot.